Trump's Unserious Plan to Steal the Election

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Dan Pfeiffer
@danpfeiffer
The rhetoric from Team Trump makes it crystal clear that they have given up on trying to win the election through legitimate means. It is critical that we talk about what Trump is trying to do, while being clear that it is unlikely to work. Here's how

Trump's Unserious Plan to Steal the Election
The Trump Campaign is getting more brazen about an illegitimate and stupid plan to win, how we talk about it matters
messagebox.substack.com

https://messagebox.substack.com/p/trumps-unserious-plan-to-steal-the

After Donald Trump won in 2016, there was a drumbeat on Twitter against “normalizing Trump.” People were worried that his dangerous behavior, racism, and corruption would come to be seen as par for the course and the media and eventually the public would lose the capacity for outrage at his outrageous behavior.

As we enter the final days of this campaign, it’s clear that this project largely failed. Trump’s behavior and rhetoric have devolved into dangerous lunacy. He has exposed tens of thousands of his supporters to COVID while dismissing science, spreading misinformation, and ridiculing masks. His plan to win the election involves voter suppression, rigged courts, and intimidation. Yet, the response has been something I describe as “uncomfortably numb.” Everyone knows it’s wrong, but the true consequences are too grave to fully contemplate. For many political reporters, this would require taking a side — something many of them have been trained to see as the highest of crimes.

There is no doubt many in the media have gotten better about fact-checking Trump’s lies. Fewer fall for “new tone” shifts and his big promises get less and less attention. Some like CNN’s Jake Tapper and Daniel Dale pushed back aggressively this morning against Trump’s efforts to sow doubt about the election.

But the uncomfortable numbness has been on full display this weekend as the Trump campaign has seen their legitimate paths to victory foreclosed by his deep unpopularity and increasingly erratic behavior. With every additional bad poll, their attempts to steal the election have become more brazen.

Buried in a New York Times story about Trump’s closing message was the following:

Trump advisers said their best hope was if the president wins Ohio and Florida is too close to call early in the night, depriving Mr. Biden a swift victory and giving Mr. Trump the room to undermine the validity of uncounted mail-in ballots in the days after.

In other words, Trump’s campaign admitted they have no hope of winning the election fair and square, so they are planning to steal it by somehow preventing the counting of ballots. This should have been the lede of the lead story in the paper not a stray paragraph in a random story.

*snip*

[Blue Owl]

1. K&R for exposure

[dchill]

2. So tired of all the winning!

[LakeArenal]

3. I believe trump also said he was counting on the SC to give it to him.

[mobeau69]

4. K & R

[beachbumbob]

5. Trump can't steal anything, its nonsense.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

6. Wish more states counted the mailed ballots ASAP...

... like Ohio, but their stupid plan won't work anyway.

Edit: I was flabbergasted to see mailed ballots piled up high in Milwaukee WI days ago, none of them counted yet. What if there was a fire just before election day?!